Announcing My Book and a Paid Tier for The Mediator

You Should Never Tell People Your Plans, Except When You Should

It’s important to keep the scroll away from the candle. Source: ChatGPT 4o.

Tl;dr: I’m writing a book—Infinite Content: AI, the Next Great Disruption of Media, and How to Navigate What’s Coming—and serializing it here for paid subscribers. Starting June 1, The Mediator will offer a paid tier with two new chapters per month, plus continued deep analysis of the structural changes roiling media and more.

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I want to thank everyone who has contributed to the success of The Mediator so far. My subscribers and readers; those who amplify my work on social or by forwarding it on; everyone who’s provided feedback on drafts or shared their insight; those who reply or comment publicly (positively and critically); and all the people who’ve just been encouraging.

I’m passionate about the media business. Media matters. Its societal impact far outstrips its contribution to GDP. It shapes our mental health, cultural norms, and political discourse. It’s also endlessly fascinating: complex, constantly changing, and often an early indicator of technological shifts across the broader economy.

When I’m wrestling with an essay, it’s common that I wake up in the middle of the night with some groggy semblance of a solution, or the realization that I’ve completely missed something, or a different question altogether, and feel compelled to jot it down for fear I won’t be able to get back to sleep otherwise. (Sometimes the light of day reveals it to be nonsense, sometimes it doesn’t.) I think that what one chooses to do in their time is a good Rorschach test. When I sit down at my desk, regardless of what I have to do, what I invariably want to do is get back to whatever post I’m working on.

Now, I’m channeling that energy into a book.

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I’m Writing a Book

Here’s a little story about public commitment.

Early on in my job running investor relations at Time Warner, I advocated that we announce certain plans to Wall Street. Our CEO, Jeff Bewkes, objected. “I don’t want to tell people what we’re going to do. I want to do things and then tell them what we did.” Ok, fair enough.

Years later, we found ourselves having a similar debate. In 2010, we acquired rights to NCAA March Madness for a 14-year term, in concert with CBS, for close to $11 billion. To make money on the deal, we needed to negotiate a surcharge on top of the affiliate fees that distributors like Comcast, Charter, and DirecTV paid us. We were confident we would. But investors were skeptical and our stock was under pressure.

Along with our CFO John Martin, I argued that to signal our confidence to the Street, we should disclose the surcharge we expected to achieve. Internally, some thought this would put our affiliate sales team in a tough spot. We made the opposite case: Bewkes publicly committing to a surcharge would improve our team’s bargaining power. They would be able to walk in the door for any affiliate negotiation, shrug their shoulders and say “Sorry, Bewkes already committed publicly. I have no wiggle room.” I was wrong about a lot during my tenure, but that decision was right. The stock popped after we disclosed it and our crack affiliate sales team secured an even higher surcharge than we had modeled.

So, that yields the following maxim: Never tell anybody your plans, unless telling helps you achieve them.

Along those lines, I’m publicly committing to write a book with the rationale that it will improve the odds I finish it. The title is Infinite Content: AI, The Next Great Disruption of Media, and How to Navigate What’s Coming. It’s due to be published by The MIT Press next year.

The book draws lessons from the last great disruption of media—the internet—which set the cost to move bits on a path toward free; connects that shift with the current state of media; explains how and why GenAI will cause the next great disruption by dramatically reducing the cost to make bits, too; and then explores the business, cultural, and societal implications of “infinite content.” My intended audience is operators, investors, policymakers, creatives, creators, those interested in the mechanics and analysis of disruption, and anyone else with a stake in the media business (which is just about everyone).

As you might imagine, it pulls from a lot of what I’ve written in this Substack. But I’ve found that there is a big difference between writing a discrete post and weaving together a cohesive narrative over a dozen or more chapters.

Publishing a Different Way

Traditional publishing takes a surprisingly long time. From the time a writer submits the initial manuscript, it can easily take a year before publication. Given that GenAI is moving so fast, it will be challenging to write a book that isn’t obsolete before the ink dries. But since I write about how the media business is changing, it makes sense to publish a different way, too.

The MIT Press has generously allowed me to serialize the book in The Mediator, for paid subscribers. I will release two chapters per month, and I’ll pull them down once the book is officially published. I hope and expect that the feedback I receive along the way will make the book immeasurably better.

I released the draft introductory chapter for free today here.

Doubling Down on The Mediator

I launched The Mediator a little less than 18 months ago, after writing sporadically on Medium for a few years. My primary goal was to create a sort of virtuous circle of learning: write as a structured way to tackle questions that no one else is asking, generate feedback, improve the quality of my questions, and so on.

There are a lot of good (and a few great) Substacks and newsletters focused on media trends. But few focus on the structural drivers of change and the practical implications. That’s the gap I aim to fill. For more on the philosophy and intent of The Mediator, see here.

Over the last year, The Mediator has organically turned into a business, attracting consulting projects, speaking engagements, and advisory roles. (If you are interested in hearing more about any of those, please contact me here.)

Now, I intend to devote even more time and energy to it. To support that, I’m launching a paid tier. If you’ve found The Mediator valuable, I hope you’ll support it by subscribing and help shape this book as it comes together in real time.